Cargill, the world's largest agricultural group, has reported a 62% rise in first-quarter earnings despite a slide in profits at three of its five business units.

The company, which is also one of the world's biggest privately held enterprises, said that earnings surged to $1.49bn for the June to August quarter compared with $917m a year before.

Cargill gave no other financial data.

Earnings rose in both the group's origination and processing division, which acts an intermediary between farmers and users, and its industrial business, Cargill's fertilizer-to-steel unit.

The division's growth "reflected continued demand for crop nutrients in response to the world's increased need for higher crop yields", Cargill said.

Mosaic fillip

The group said it booked a "substantial boost" from its majority stake in Mosaic, the Canada-based fertilizer company.

However, earnings fell in Cargill's agriculture services, risk management and financial, and food ingredients and applications businesses. The decline in food ingredients reflected in part the closure of an Iowa corn processing plant in June. The factory will reopen in November.

Greg Page, Cargill's chairman and chief executive, said that the group had "realised a strong start to our new fiscal year in a continuing environment of outsized volatility in agricultural and energy markets and severe turbulence in financial markets".